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I love love love how you break your sentences and move on to the next line in your poems but still make them flow nicely. Every time I try to do that it feels really awkward when I read it again so I just stick to writing in prose form or in very long sentences. I really want to try writing poems but I can't seem to get that flow. Any tips? Thanks in advance xx

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Thank you very much!

The technique of breaking off lines in poems is called “enjambment."

Line breaks are where natural pauses occur in the writing, and they signal a change of movement; they can also emphasize certain lines to make them more important or intense than others.

Line breaks, in general, make a poem more interesting and dynamic. For example, Charles Bukowski wrote

"Love breaks my bones

and I

laugh."

The word “laugh" is on a separate line by itself to get more emphasis; it makes those three lines even more intense.

Put in breaks where you would pause naturally if you were reading the poem out loud, or where you want to emphasize a certain section or bit. Put in breaks where you think they will sound good and flow naturally. 

It helps to read your poems out loud as you’re writing them and mark off the places where you make a natural pause as you’re speaking out loud, and that is a good signifier of where you should break the line. If you do this, it becomes a lot easier to tell when to separate the poem.

Line breaks are just a nice poetic tool that can make a piece much more powerful and unique, and can create tension in certain lines.

I hope that helped! :)


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